Members of the three Joomla leadership teams, Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT), and directors of the board of Open Source Matters (OSM), gathered for two days of joint meetings prior to the Joomla World Conference in Cancun last November.

These minutes document the discussions that took place over the two days of meetings. While not a transcript, they are the product of committing all of the proceedings to record, as accurately as possible.

N.B.: the term "[LINK]" appears in place of non-publicly shared documents.

Chris opened the meeting. Alex Censor, the facilitator, introduced himself. He had never heard of Joomla before. He did a little research and is very impressed with what the project has accomplished.

Alex spent time reviewing some questions he had prepared and shared earlier via email:

What do you see about what Joomla brings to the world? Why do we like it, why do we put all of this time into it?

Javier - when he started in leadership - thought we need more people in leadership - let’s try to identify what we have in common on current leadership teams so we can grow. What we have in common is -- Joomla.

What is the value of Joomla to you as an individual?

Tessa - the community - we are one big family. Unusual community - international. Virtual but still strong sense of community. We all need a sense of community.

What do you contribute to Joomla?

What do you get out of being part of Joomla?

What do you want to come out of these meetings?

A consensus about where we’re going next. Decisions. We’re never going to get a consensus. Sarah: we are turning 10 next year - this is an opportunity to “make it happen” - we are the people to make sure that happens. We have growing pains in our structure and the way we work - we can get the next 10 years better than this.

A common WHY - a unified sense of direction - without that it makes it hard to do anything else.

Address concerns about structure changes in creative and happy manner.

What are you worried about that might happen - what do you not want to happen?

Mike - we have a long history of making decisions in these meetings with no deadlines and follow through and commitment - not doing them as we say we will do them. Want for any decisions that are made to have mechanisms to be sure these things will get done.

Most people are optimistic that we will have good outcomes from these meetings.

Joe asks Alex: as an outsider - in the short period of time that you have been aware of our organization, what is the thing that confuses you most about us? Alex is surprised he’d never heard of us because he is involved in IT. Also surprised that Joomla has managed to be so widely distributed internationally and get so much done and be so big.

Ground rule: - repeat in your own words what the other person has said to their own satisfaction before you refute it.

Ronni wants to talk about structure changes amongst the leadership because we voted on this team to do a task.

What about people who aren’t present here? Can they also make an alternative proposal? The community at large has not seen the documents yet - we are still in the process of talking with the working groups.

Back to the agenda. Guillermo is concerned about how the Spanish speaking community can understand what the other proposals are.

Start the agenda with the budget report.

Discussion about how to include leadership members who are not present in these meetings. Taking good notes will be most useful both for those who are present and those who are not.

Start with budget, then WHY discussion. After lunch teams go on their own. Tomorrow morning start here at 9:00 and continue with the why discussion, or go on to the structure proposal discussion.

Ryan proposes breaking into small groups to work on big topics like proposals. Ronni says that happened at JAB and we didn’t get ownership on the topic. Martijn’s compromise - 1 or 2 people start it off then we split up like at JAB - discuss in smaller groups for 30 minutes, then get back together and share bullet points.

Throughout the morning Peter Bui took down proposed agenda points for the next two days. [LINK]

COFFEE BREAK

BUDGET: Vic Drover

In 2014 will have a $200,000 deficit in line with the budget: we spent more on events than ever before. We had more in-person time, more sprints - strategic expenditures that have had a positive impact.

The decision was made to go over the budget because we weren’t investing enough in the project. We didn’t want to feel like we were hoarding money - it’s community money.

Ryan - how does this deficit help us become more profitable next year? Vic - that was not the intention and it doesn’t help us in that way.

We can’t allow a $200,000 loss next year, and we won’t.

Sarah: We spent a lot of money on legal and it will be more profitable for us next year (i.e. hosting contract with Siteground was time-consuming and expensive from a legal perspective). A lot was spent on Grace Hopper to get more volunteers for our code base.

Vic will be pushing people to come up with concrete goals and objectives. Using our financial policies to get us into a strategic place.

Budget Process Schedule: [LINK]. It’s important to stick to this schedule to get all budgeting completed on time.

If anyone needs more details about last year’s spending see Martijn or Vic. Citibank changed their usage terms which interrupted the connection to our accounting software, so Profit and Loss Reports may not get updated before December. Trying to get better numbers before the end of the budget process.

Is anyone in doubt as to why the budget is becoming more detailed compared to earlier years? This question will be addressed tomorrow.

Applause for hard work of financial team.

Here is a link to report from the Finance Team meeting in NYC:

[LINK]

Link to the 2014 budget worksheet:

[LINK]

BRAINSTORMING

The WHY Discussion - Sarah Watz

The document about the Why discussion has been shared with everyone on the Leadership teams, with representatives from the Marketing Team and the SWOT Team - let’s start talking about what we are doing, why and how. Many have been helping out, asking questions and getting different opinions. But so far the message is not very clear. We need to be able to explain who we are and why to outside people - we need to define this for Sensis (marketing services).

We have a very compelling message. We saw that at Grace Hopper - the booth was swamped with people wanting to know what is this all about? We have a good product, a good sense of community, and people would like to be part of it.

There are users who just want to use our software, who don’t care about the community. We try to speak the same message to all the groups and it isn’t working. We need to talk about the WHY.

Martijn - what process would you propose to get to this why?

Ronni - Drupal and WP are successful with end clients because they are very defined in what they do for the end product users. We are strong at our community part, but not the end-user part. We could start with our community first and get that base in place.

Brainstorming session: Sarah suggests breaking into 4 different groups. Focus on what we are actually creating as benefits for people who use Joomla. Look from the outside in. We know our inner “why”. But in the marketplace we do not have a clear positioning.

Come up with one sentence saying WHY, then do the same for “how” and “what”.

Group #2: Rod Martin - word “empowerment”. Both Vic and Radek shared their stories about Joomla. All our lives have been changed by Joomla. The group came up with “When you need more than a blog, there’s Joomla” - flexibility was a keyword too.

Group #3: Peter Martin - Empower and inspire people people with websites. Drupal - requires tech skills. WP - not as functional. Other key words: opportunity, solution, connecting people. Ruth: the slogan created for Grace Hopper: “Connecting billions, inspiring millions, designed by you - the web made stronger by Joomla!”. Working document from GHC slogan: [LINK]

Group 4: Tessa - our group broke it down into pieces and came up with one global phrase that relates to all situations: “Empowering solutions”.

The HOW Discussion

HOW - how are we enabling, how are we empowering?

There can be some confusion between why, how and what. It needs to be broad enough to cover all our products. If we have those things we can craft messages that would be only for the framework, or only for the CMS, for example.

Group #2: The flexible and accessible tools built by people from all around the world that speaks your language, and allows humans and technologies to interact in a transparent way with content, keeping your privacy and providing you with full control.

Group #3

Simplify:

lowering barriers to entry

simplify our websites

making it easier to use our software

simplify our administrator UI, for example

Group #4: Empowering digital solutions with an accessible and flexible platform

The WHAT Discussion

Three products: the CMS, the framework, joomla.com

Group 1: Flexible application framework suitable to build any of our solutions including the CMS, distributions and Joomla.com. Marketing materials, code documentation with snippets and code examples, need good sample code for the CMS and framework code. Sample starter application for the framework. Communication of what to use, the solutions for Joomla, etc. Angular app to guide the user.

4 different choices:

1. Website on Joomla.com -> for people who have little experience and want a website fast (WP audience).

2. Download & install Joomla -> people with somewhat more knowledge & want to host their own website.

Group #3: How we can balance innovation vs stability? There is a desire that the J3 branch embodies stability and backwards compatibility of the platform, but in order to be innovative we need to look at something different and run the two in parallel.

Group #4: Having the ability to quickly get started with a Joomla site to match needs. Migration tools and resources, compatibility dependency checkers. Domain name purchase option. More distributions on joomla.com.

Distributions are a more practical solution today thanks to the evolution of the platform.

What is our final outcome of this exercise? Share it with the marketing team - they will create scenarios of what can be done with certain proposals. It’s up to us as leaders to define the WHY. Dedicate a small leadership team to finalize this?

Discussion about making a motion.

Have a small group made up of several leadership members (3) and people from the Marketing group to offer up a comprehensive statement. They have done a lot of work with the swot analysis - their input will help. To deliver a concise WHY statement.

All agree. Set a date: once finished the statement will go on the mailing list and everyone votes. Our job is to lead - we represent the community. Do not need to ask for community input on every decision. Need a plan on how to respond to reactions - the team will designate a person to do that. Communicate it in a way to help it be understood from the start what we are trying to do.

Volunteers for this group: Rod, Chris, Peter Martin. The deliverable is 1 or 2 WHY’s, with help from 2 people from the marketing team.

LUNCH BREAK - separate group meetings in the afternoon

Thursday - Nov. 6

Going around the room asking how everyone is feeling - lots of feelings of optimism. A few digestive problems. Request to proceed with respect.

Review of our history - Ryan and Chris

Ryan - would like to suggest a small change to the agenda. We have a younger leadership team than in the past. It might be useful to be thinking about where our roots are and where we come from. Why we started and how we got to where we are today. Ryan and Chris are willing to share 15 minutes of background as we go into important discussions about how we’re changing.

Mambo - was proprietary (Miro corporation) - it became Open Source - people like Andrew Eddie started contributing to Mambo. As interest in this project grew, it became more successful. People joined not to help sell a product, but because they wanted to learn how to do fun new things.

In 2004 - the Miro corporation which had given up its code to Open Source - tried to take the project back. That’s how it appeared to the people on the core team. Miro didn’t fully understand the license (GPL), and thought they could take it out of Open Source and make it a proprietary product again.

The situation deteriorated and the Mambo team decided they had to fork the project. They set up a website under the name of Open Source Matters. Entire core team agreed to move over to this new project. There were about 12 people. This was 2005. The first thing that was set up was the forum.

Then came a contest to choose new name - they couldn’t continue to use Mambo. Joomla was chosen. Then there was a logo contest.

Link to the forum topic about choosing the name for Joomla: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=89

This was the starting point for Joomlacode: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=80

Open Source Matters soon thereafter was created as an organization to oversee things from a legal perspective. Why OSM and not Joomla Foundation or something else? Open source is what made the original proprietary product a success. The focus is on gift-giving. Altruism, being kind. Create an environment of being able to give gifts to others (writing code, etc).

There was never an explicit intent to collaborate together to help businesses succeed. It was about having fun together, doing something generous.

2008 meeting in Munich - creation of PLT, CLT and OSM. The responsibilities that have changed the most since then are the responsibilities of OSM. Since 2008 (6 years ago) we haven’t done much reorganizing. Structure and change happened from 2005 - 2008, and it’s remained the same since then. Challenge - all of us are leaders volunteering for an organization called Open Source Matters, which happens to have a great project - and only one project - called Joomla. In 2008 no one ever thought about a government check and balance system. We were all part of one core team in the past. Silos were formed and have hardened or softened. But there was just one core team in the past. In 2008 we sat down over a few beers and decided these 3 teams would be a good idea.

Now we have 10 years of experience. We all contribute to Open Source Matters. It is important to keep these things in mind as we go into these discussions today. In the beginning it was just a team of folks who wanted to give gifts. If we are mindful of that, our meetings should go well.

PLT, CLT and OSM were not created to have a government-like system of checks and balances. The project was very small and very informal. Over the years things have grown bigger and we have been forced to add them. Where we are right now is not necessarily ideal - it is a product of history.

The only legal entity is OSM.

We have an opportunity to finish the job we started in 2008. We were all selected for good reasons.

Team Reports - GOALS

CLT

2014 CLT Report

Completed

JRD relaunch

Marketing team - materials for Grace Hopper

Bitergia Dashboard

In progress

Volunteer Portal

JED (later: templates)

Site upgrades (JCM, Community - JUGS, Showcase)

Accessibility Working Group

Code of Conduct, Conflict of Interest

PLT

Objective 1.1: Align more closely with semantic versioning: done

Objective 1.2: Publish a new development strategy: done. See http://developer.joomla.org/news/587-faq-s-for-joomla-s-improved-release-cycle.html

Objective 2.2: Introduce a new Release Leader role: done Michael on 3.3, David on 3.4 and Roberto for 3.5 (it was adopted in practice but not informed publicly)

Objective 2.3: Reduce the time from pull request to code merge: done but we don’t have metrics to prove it

Objective 3.1: Introduce a new feature life-cycle management process: not done. We haven’t reach a consensus on how is going to work

Objective 3.2: Reorganise the Production Working Groups. Not done yet

Objective 3.3: Regular reporting by the Production Working Groups. we started a report tool in the meeting minutes but haven’t been really used yet.

Objective 4.1: Increase the scope and coverage of testing in the CMS https://twitter.com/hashtag/jtest14?src=hash and [LINK]

Objective 4.2: Improve the scope and coverage of documentation: progress have been done in documentation and now internationalization

Objective 4.3: Enforce coding standards: code style sprint was done that removed all the code style issues in the CMS, tweaks were done in the coding standards. For the next year we need to make it follow the joomla-coding standars at the standards repo https://github.com/joomla/coding-standards/ of using the curent specific rules at https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/tree/staging/build/phpcs/Joomla

Objective 4.7: Increase pre-release testing: we need more manual test and the release leaeder need more time to be dedicated to testing. There is some workflows and procedures identified that needs to be improved but we are actually in a good shape.

Objective 5.1: Review and adjust our communications channels: we moved to slack.

Objective 5.2: Formalise new feature development around Working Groups: we started it with the roadmap announcing the wished features.

Objective 5.3: Code review to become more formal: no progress so far.

Objective 5.4: Retire Joomlacode: done!

Objective 6.1: Improve translation team processes: work in progress

Objective 6.2: Develop a new translation tool: com localise has been done, work in progress

Goal 7: Improve the Joomla CMS user experience: there hasn’t been much activity in the UX team however the new frontenders team is going to provide improvements in this area for 3.5

Objective 8.1: Define goals and objectives of a next-generation architecture. There has been discussion and George new MVC GSoC project is going to bring some new exciting enhancements to the next versions of Joomla

Objective 8.2: Hold an "architecture sprint" in february.

Objective 8.3: Define the next-generation architecture. Work in progress.

Objective 9.1: Participate in Google Summer of Code 2014: done with great success.

Objective 9.2: Increase attendance and speaking engagements: done.

Objective 9.3: Increase usage of Joomla in an educational context: no progress.

Objective 9.4: Increase marketing of the CMS and Framework: progress has been done but more contact with the marketing team will be done in 2015.

Objective 9.5: Framework license change: voted but not yet implemented there is 16 lines missing to be relicensed, we are awaiting the details of the author of that lines from Don to finish the process.

Objective 10.1: Gather anonymous usage information AND Objective 10.2: Gather more detailed download information: code was written but there was some disagreement on transparency and privacy so we didn’t move forward but we will review it in 2015

Plugin - https://github.com/dongilbert/jstats-plugin

Server - https://github.com/dongilbert/jstats-server

You can see the PLT 2014 detailed goals at: [LINK]

OSM

Completed:

A new structure for archive of OSM documentation for history

Governance Working Group - on hold because of the proposal for structure & method change.

Demo Hosting RFP is finalized with a contract with SiteGround. The Joomla Demo Website was launched at the end of September.

Marketing RFP is finalized with a contract with Sensis.

In Progress

Event Team - improving the process for approving and supporting JoomlaDays (as a direct result of the cancelled NYC 2014 JoomlaDay)

Trademark Team - three ongoing cases, a new site for trademark is on it’s way
Demo Site Team - Launch of joomla.com demo is planed for December 1st 2014.

Certification Team - pilot for Joomla Administrator Certification is conducted during JWC14.

Capital Team - new sponsorship packages on the way

Financial Team - working on the new financial policies. 2015 Budget Process has begun and is schedule to complete on 18-Dec-2014.

OSM website - a new website is in progress

Goals for Teams

Break into small groups to brainstorm on overall project goals. First share goals that have been brainstormed in individual teams.

Goals and budget are closely tied. Ryan will write a blog post of team goals for community feedback. November 12 is date for blog post (budget deadline is Nov 11).

Ronni will lead a team to work on overall project goals for the future. If anyone wants to work with him on that let Ronni know.

Brainstorm breakout - 15 minutes - each team picks small list of max 5 goals for 3-5 years.

Results of goals brainstorming sessions:

Group 1:

How Joomla can be more mobile first

Web services - speak many languages - a hub

Evolution to support new technologies besides the CMS

Education - training

Data to inform our decisions

Get more diversity - more women, different languages, different cultures

Accessibility

Communication with end users (email list though the admin interface)

Fun

Group 2

Innovation incubator - to revitalize bringing in devs to do innovative things. It could spawn all kinds of open source stuff and bring in new talent. Establish a center for innovation that can attract new talent to the overall organization. Give them the space to work (mentoring, encouragement, etc.).

Increase involvement in outside conferences. The goal that we represent ourselves at more non-Joomla events generically. Send devs to coding conferences, CLT to community confs, etc. Allow us to be exposed to things we currently aren’t. Spread Joomla - evangelism, but also be aware of what is out there so we don’t become ingrown.

Joomla to have 25% market share by 2018. Right now we are at 8.5% of all CMS-driven websites. We’ve been static for 5 years. Lite version of Joomla - distributions. Some work has already been done on in it.

Ruth would like Joomla to be the most accessible CMS (languages, disabilities, people who want to use it in any way that suits them). Would empower so many people in so many ways. Nobody else is doing it.

Greater diversity within our dev community - gender, internationalization, acceptance of people at all levels of skill, mentor them - help them improve their coding abilities. Better documentation for all levels of developers.

A mentor committee to help new people in the Joomla community and to guide them. Community retention - help make people want to stay in our community.

Code of conduct - a formalized process - support for people on the receiving end of abuse. Project wide - for anything within the project

Alumni board - to remind us of our history and consult with us.

Group 3

Defining the next generation of the CMS

Redevelopment of the CMS to adapt to marketspace

Accessibility, user experience , internationalisation

Growth and maturing of the project

If you want to join the Goals Team send Ronni an email.

Structure Change Discussion

Full group until lunch. Break up for lunch.

We are halfway into the process. The Structural team has presented the work to the leadership - and now to the working group teams. Next we will get feedback from the community. Lots of reactions on social media and blogging platforms. We would like to reaffirm that there is a clear mandate from the leadership to produce a proposal. This project came from the leadership but Ronni and others have been accused of lots of things. We need to respect that it is a collective answer from the leadership.

Not everyone will agree - but we need our integrity to be respected. To have acknowledgement from everyone that what we do is a team effort - if we task any working group with a job we need to respect that process. We have to support the process we started - we may not agree with the end result. We are looking for agreement from people about this. We are in this leadership together.

While we may not personally agree with the findings of the team, we need to support the work of the team. The same applies to any working group.

How can we help avoid this from happening? The more transparent we can be to the community - about the process - then there is never a problem. When we decide something we document it and put it out there.

What happened within this structure process - we disagreed with each other in public - makes it not fun to volunteer. No one wants to join us if they see how we treat each other. As leaders we have to be role models.

Respecting each other: we should not use Twitter to attack or make comments about what we are doing - it’s only 140 characters - people will interpret things the way they want to. Do people agree? We need respectful communication. We should protect our volunteers at every level.

How do you deal with people who want the freedom to tweet what they want? The important thing is to keep respect for each other in the leadership team. You are free to say whatever you want.

It’s a slippery slope when you tell people that because of your badge you can’t go against anything the leadership decides. People can’t tell the difference between personal and leadership tweets.

Be aware of how tweets can be interpreted - can choose not to tweet something.

What is meant in 140 characters when taken out of context can be interpreted in different ways.

When you get a badge you are representative.

If my employees on twitter say I hate this or that about my company, it would be very bad. On a soccer team you don’t say the plan is bad or the coach sucks.

Why do people share negative things on Twitter and not in email?

Transparency is the best guarantee against misunderstandings. The more transparent we can be, the better for the process.

Ronni proposes that something formal be put in the Code of Conduct. Should we work in that direction?

Proposal: task Ruth with the job of refining the code of conduct. Once it’s done take a formal vote on the mailing list.

Structure Change Proposal

It’s been shared with the working groups. There are different points of view about what is a proposal. We were tasked with getting a proposal to the community. A decentralized model.

Two people wanted share alternative proposals with this group - there will be time to do that on Saturday - they will have 15 minutes each.

The two alternative proposals have added upward layers. Some in the working group on Slack think everyone should have the right to vote.

Michael - It has felt like as a leadership team we should only be focusing on our proposal.

Sander - glad that people have jumped in with different proposals - but at JAB we agreed to finish the task of coming up with a proposal, and getting feedback on this proposal.

Radek - we aren’t considering the other two proposals.

Ronni - if we open it up we need to make a formal decision for anyone from the community to present their proposals.

Guillermo - worried that in the new proposal structure no one from Latin America could belong. Because we are bringing in a U.S./European corporate model. Departments, product, the whole concept is corporate - not community. The group of 9 will bring in politics and lobbying.

Ronni - if you have a good job in a good company, you have freedom and responsibility. We wanted to give teams freedom and responsibility to do things.

Guillermo is worried that our flat organization will become a pyramid. Sander sees our proposal as an upside-down pyramid.

[Javier translates for Guillermo who preferred to express himself in Spanish at this point]: 4 years ago in OSM and the project together it made sense to have a messy structure because we weren’t big enough to need to be organized differently. In the Spanish -speaking community, we aren’t ready to help our community fit into this new structure. We aren’t structured enough in our local communities. Now that we have Latino American representation in leadership that can represent the latin american community - we are afraid to lose that. Guillermo doesn’t see how diversity will fit in to the department leaders.

How to proceed?: there is a proposal on the table and there are alternative proposals.

Provide a form for feedback? So people can submit it in one place.

The current time frame leaves until Christmas before we come to a vote. Mike has a concern that if we go too long we could run into some leadership turnover before the vote.

The proposals presented verbally on Saturday will be listened to with an open mind.

Will we be proposing our proposal on Saturday? No. When we ask for community feedback we should give an email address if people want to submit alternative proposals.

On Saturday we should talk about the process before we hear the other two proposals. Make it clear that what is proposed in the new proposals may become part of the current proposal.

Any further concerns to share? Is everyone ok with the process? Guillermo is not in favor because it doesn’t leave enough time to include the non-English community.

We have not shared the proposal with the community - it is still at the working group level. If we need to add time for that we will in order to have proper translations.

Budget Policy

A non-profit must have a budget policy to be truly accountable to its members. Vic presented a proposal that was produced at the Finance Team meeting in September. The goal today is to present it to the leadership for feedback.Eventually, we hope to adopt a version of this across all teams as the official financial policy document.

[LINK]

There was a lot of interest in this document and many people provided feedback (see comments in the document directly). These comments will be incorporated into the draft document as appropriate. The policy will then be reviewed again by leadership.

Today I am happy to report that a balanced 2015 budget proposal has been prepared by myself and dedicated volunteers from all areas of the Joomal project.

A special thanks goes out to Chris Davenport and Olaf Offick — budget liaisons from the PLT and CLT — for their hard work and professional attitude throughout the budget process.

Process

The 2015 budget process is quite similar to prior years and is well documented. In short, the 3-month process has 5 stages:

Set project-wide goals

Define objectives to achieve each goal

Assign expenses and/or revenue to each objective

Prioritize objectives

Submit proposal for community feedback and approval by the board of Open Source Matters

Two important changes from the 2014 budget process were included for 2015:

Line item owners would be specified to have decision making authority for expenditures

The budget would be balanced

Budget summary

As a result of the budget process, the proposed budget projects revenue of $755,575 with expenses matching dollar-for-dollar (a summary of revenue and expenses associated with the Goals of the project are shown at the end of this document. The full budget organized by our Chart of Accounts is also available).

Based on this balanced budget, we project that our end-of-year assets will total $329,886.

The Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) is pleased to announce the addition of three new members: Viktor Vogel, Jessica Dunbar and Robert Deutz.

The PLT is responsible for leading and coordinating the development of the Joomla CMS and the Joomla Framework. This includes releasing new versions, fixing bugs, adding new features, translating and creating documentation.

The Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) is pleased to announce the addition of two new members: George Wilson and Roland Dalmulder.

The PLT is responsible for leading and coordinating the development of the Joomla CMS and the Joomla Framework. This includes releasing new versions, fixing bugs, adding new features, translating and creating documentation.